Obama's 2012 tripwires

With a two-minute video that starts with an image of a family farm and features just one brief shot of him, Barack Obama has launched his reelection campaign.

His people expect to raise a billion dollars. The GOP field is considered at this point pretty bantamweight. The putative candidates are reluctant to leave the starting gate. By this time in 2007, Obama had raised $25 million. The leading GOP contender, Mitt Romney, raised just $1.9 million in the first quarter (reports that Michele Bachmann led Romney should be marked with an asterisk, as her $2.2 million total was mostly for reelection to her seat in Congress - just $500,000 was sent by contributors specifically wanting to see her seek the presidency).

The consensus in Washington is that, rocky as things have sometimes been for Obama, he's in solid shape. But the Washington consensus – this is shocking, I know - has been known to be wrong. Could it be now? What are tripwires on the way to Obama's reelection?

I count five. Let's start with the most obvious, the economy. We seem to be in recovery – 216,000 jobs added last month heralds more good news coming. Some leading economists predict an unemployment rate, which peaked at 10.2% and is now 8.8%, of around 8% by November 2012. That's still a little higher than when he took office. Good enough?

Second, there's always the t-word. A successful terrorist attack on American soil, even one small in scale, would be used relentlessly by the right wing against Obama and could completely change the election dynamic. Third and somewhat relatedly, there is the question of the changes convulsing the Middle East. Will Egypt become a democracy or another extremist redoubt? How will Libya end, and Yemen? Some or even many of these outcomes are outside a president's control, but voters have only one chance to render a judgment on whether their president has managed the affairs of the world well or badly.

Fourth – and now we leave substance and return to our regularly scheduled political handicapping - there's the electoral college. A candidate needs 270 electoral college votes to become president. Obama won 365 in 2008. Four states he won pretty narrowly add up to 73 votes (Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Indiana). Flipping those isn't difficult to envision, and that automatically makes it a tight race.

And finally, fifth, and for my money the most important one: I think it's all but impossible that he'll generate the intensity of enthusiasm that he did in 2008. Then, Democrats were thirsting to get the White House back after eight years out of power. In addition there was the fresh allure of Obama himself. But a person can only be fresh once. The dreams Democrats had about dramatically changing the direction of the country have crashed into the realities of a political system rigged for the top 1% and of a president who has not been able (or, sometimes, willing) to confront that cold fact.

How, then, does he rev up the troops? Some of that will be taken care of by the threat, to Democrats, of the GOP winning the White House back. But it just won't be like 2008, and Obama's biggest challenge by far is to explain to his voters why that's okay.